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Responding to a long, thoughtful
article in last Sunday's New York Times about the predicament
of America's next generation of retirees, a reader from
Minneapolis named Patrick cut to the chase: "I'm a Gen Xer. None
of my siblings or friends save a dime."

In so many words, he summed up a new report from
the consulting firm PwC (formerly known as
PricewaterhouseCoopers). The report, the 2013 edition of an
annual temperature-taking of working people's financial wellness,
portrays Generation X—the roughly 85 million Americans 32 to 52
years of age—as the most direly affected by the savings crisis.

And
they know it. Less than 40 percent of this group told PwC
that they are confident about their retirement. Of those over 50,
it's less than a quarter.

PwC's findings are hardly new. While the current retired
generation is famous for their thrift and the nation's youngest
adults are already showing signs of financial savvy, the unpreparedness of both Baby
Boomers and Gen Xers has been extensively
documented.

But while many Boomers seemed to have been better positioned to
profit from the dotcom boom and the housing bubble (not to
mention their Greatest Generation parents' estates), Gen X was
hit with a severe recession in their prime wealth-building years.
From 2007 to 2010, a recent Pew study
found, Gen-Xers lost 45 percent of their net worth – about
$33,000 on average.

There are other reasons to pity Gen Xers, especially the older
ones: As PwC's report points out, those who came to parenthood in
the past two decades are not only putting their kids through
college but supporting them afterward, as the recession has left
many of them unemployed. Meanwhile, their own parents are living
longer but needing more care.

They are, in a word, strapped. Half of Gen Xers have difficulty
meeting their expenses each month, compared to less than a third
of Boomers and Millennials. Some 58 percent carry balances on
their credit cards, 16 percentage points higher than Boomers.

"Not having enough emergency savings is still the top concern,"
said Kent Allison, a partner at PwC who oversaw the study. "This
is an indication of just how extended people are."

But PwC's study starkly shows how those in middle-middle age have
failed to adapt to the economic storms as well as other groups.
"Generation X overextended themselves" in the good times, said
Allison. "They bought what they could afford, not what they
should afford, and the economic downturn hit them hard." The
damage done, "they are often making choices they shouldn't be
making," said Allison, citing paying for their children's
educations and continuing to spend on credit.

Their lack of discipline is coming at the cost of their main
sources of retirement savings. Of the three groups broken out in
the PwC study, Gen X is the most likely to have already withdrawn
from retirement plans like 401(k)s and IRAs, and the mostly
likely to do so in the future. "With their depleted home equity,
employees are continuing to view their 401(k) funds as not just a
retirement savings vehicle," said Allison. "Even when you force
them into saving, with auto-enrollment in 401(k)s, there is
leakage of 30 to 40 percent."

The study shows that all Americans need to be smarter about how
they spend, Allison said. The share of workers who said they
don't save for retirement because their expenses are too high
leapt last year to 73 percent from 60 percent in 2011. Nor do we
save as wisely as we could, failing to take full advantage of
programs like health savings accounts, that are designed to help
with expenses in retirement.

But is it Generation X that appears to be most stalled by the
downturn, rather than energized. "We were hoping the pain would
help fix the problem," said Allison. "The question is, with
things getting good again, will they remember being on the edge?

Patrick, the Sunday Times reader from Minneapolis, doesn't think
so. "Now we're in our 30s and they still haven't figured out how
to live within their means," he wrote. He can take cold comfort
that his family and friends are not alone.